[Android][iOS] Major Mayhem 2 Released!

Major Mayhem 2 has just gone live world-wide! Get it on:

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rocketjump.majormayhem2
iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/major-mayhem-2/id1075567730?mt=8

 

This is really impressive.

As an FYI, it doesn't run super smoothly on my lower tier android device. It is almost flawless on my iPhone.

You also didn't link to the iOS store in the post : ) It's the google store twice.

Did you work on this by yourself? How long did it take?

 

Thanks, i just updated the link.

Two of us for two years. It was a long slog...

 

I can imagine : ) How have the game's downloads been so far?

You should really post this to TouchArcade. They love well made games like this. You might get a few downloads off ProductHunt as well.

Cheers,

Dave

 

I've been playing this game for the past 30 minutes and love it. It's really cool to see an iOS game this polished.

 

Thanks guys.

Downloads are good on Android ~10,000 a day, iOS not so much, ~200 a day. That's the difference in app discovery between the two platforms. All those downloads are organic.

Yeah I guess i should get involved in games media, but part of me just can't be bothered... I'm not sure why. I guess I have little faith in how well games media actually moves the needle these days. But I guess there's no harm in trying.

 

I haven't found much luck w/ traditional media. Touch Arcade seems like it has a MAJOR effect though for iOS. It's hard to prove... but I feel like there is a direct correlation between getting featured by Apple and how well your Touch Arcade thread does in the first few days.

There is such an abysmal Let's Play culture for mobile games as well. Lonniedos is pretty easy to reach out to on Instagram : )

Dave

 

The first Major Mayhem was so good. It's probably one of my top 5 iOS games of all time. Didn't this use to be an Adult Swim game?

 

Adult Swim published the first one on mobile. Basically a marketing for revenue share swap. This time we decided to go it alone as the game has an established fanbase.

 

Did Adult Swim make the marketing to revenue swap worthwhile at all? Or did you feel like you got the short end of the straw?

 

Without Adult Swim when we first released Major Mayhem we would have run out of cash. They pushed us to change it from a $1 app to F2P and they advanced us some cash to get us through.

They also have a very good relationship with Apple and Google, we were featured by Apple twice, and Google once. Those features probably would not have happened without them. We have not yet been featured by either for Major Mayhem 2. But like all things it's impossible to tell what life would be like had we made other choices. All I can say is we're still in business.

I should also say that our situation now is very different to our situation when MM1 was coming out. The market is also radically different, app discovery is completely different. When MM1 was coming out, Ads in apps was not even a thing, IAP was new and the app store was just a bunch of top 100 lists. So it makes sense to reevaluate and if need be, make different choices.

Edit: And just as I say we have not yet been featured, some apple featuring has started to appear. Yay for us! Thanks Apple.

 

It is very impressive you have built a big audience . It's spectacular

 

Wow impressive!!
How many people work on that game?

 

Thanks, Major Mayhem 1 had 20mil+ downloads, this one has ~200,000 so far so it's a decent start.

Mainly just two of us. We got a couple others to help out for a month or two with a little extra art and audio.

 

I absolutely loved the original Major Mayhem... until you guys pushed an update that redefined how you unlocked weapons in the game. That update completely wiped hours of earned unlocked weapons... without warning me. Needless to say, I was a bit bitter at the time

That said, as a testament to the fun-factor of the game, I eventually got back into playing MM1 and still play the heck out of it whenever I find myself on travel. It's just such a well paced game with a very satisfying game mechanic.

With Adult Swim attached to the game, I never realized that it was made by just two guys. That's freakishly impressive! The polish of that game really shows what can be accomplished with a great (and tiny) team. Thanks for sharing your insights on MM1 and I hope those downloads keep rolling in for MM2! My hat's off to you guys!

Now, of you excuse me, MM2 has finished downloading, I've gotta go shoot some stuff

 

That update you mention was a bug. It was never meant to reset your progress. There was an issue with an older version of the Android SDK and/or Unity that made the save path change and there was no way to get access to the old save path. There was nothing I could do about it and it wasn't apparent to me that it would happen as it didn't happen for everyone, including our test devices.

Anyway, MM2 shouldn't suffer from that issue. We have a cloud save system (if you login) that should keep your data safe across devices, and even in the event you lose data we can restore your progress if you contact us.

Thanks for playing.

 

Thanks for the reply and the MM1 clarification, it's really appreciated I imagine that bug was probably as frustrating for you guys to witness as it was for us unlucky folks to experience.

Also, MM2.... it's already got me completely hooked. Really, all you had to do was bring back the evil Baron Bear and I'd play. From what I've seen so far, it's already far more detailed than the original and has been just as fun. I'm looking forward to many hours of mayhem, and red ninja hunting.

Again, great job guys!

 

Congragulations on your success the game looks awesome. Pretty sure featured and millions of downloads in no time.

How did you manage to even get 10k downloads a day? Did you send out a newsletter or something? Did you use specific keyboards? Is it your app icons? Some advice would be helpful.

 

No, Major Mayhem just gets good organics on Google Play for some reason. 800,000 and counting.

 

Hi, what was your first game?
And can i ask how u publish your game?

 

I'm not sure I understand the question.

I consider my first game one I made at another studio, Sidhe (a.k.a PikPok), many years ago. Shatter https://store.steampowered.com/app/20820/Shatter/

How did I publish this game?

I just put it on Google Play and the iTunes like anyone else would. Nothing special. The only difference I can see is that Major Mayhem 2 is a sequel to the popular Major Mayhem so there's an established audience that would be more easily convinced to click and download it if they discovered it was released. The first game was published by Adult Swim so we don't have any cross promotion or anything in there at the moment. All MM2 downloads are completely organic. But that audience I mentioned was built in part through publishing with Adult Swim. However, I do believe that a great deal of Major Mayhem fans discovered the game independently of Adult Swim though.

 

Great indie release Anthony. Congrats on release and feature!
Looking forward to spending some time playing this with my son who enjoyed the first one.
Does apple notify you of the feature - or are you consta-refreshing to get notified?

 

What do you attribute to getting the feature?

It was fascinating seeing the feedback on TouchArcade. Those guys are intense when games aren't monetized the way they want : (

 

The only feature we got was in New Zealand and Australia and I attribute that to being in contact with the Apple team here in Australia. They are fairly active here and try to talk to devs and find the new things coming out.

No feature on Google as far as I'm aware, and yet 10x more downloads than iOS. go figure.

Yeah touch arcade can be intense, but so are all fans that are really passionate. Basically they want the same thing we do, the best game possible but we come at it with different priorities so you end up with conflict in design. They see it from a player and fan point of view but have no insight into the financial realities of development which force us devs into annoying positions sometimes.

 

Congrats. That is really impressive!

 

Sorry I was wondering one stuff if you don't want to reveal it ,it doesn't matter you have more than 1 000 000 installs, with unity ads ,how much money are you generating?And how many impression per day ?

 

installs != ad views

installs != retention

installs != money

So far just north of $20k for ads, a long way to go to get all the dev costs back.

 

Thanks for sharing, I mean it s very impressive your earnings. By saying developer costs , do you mean artists, sound designer ,programming etc?

 

Everything, office rent, software licensing, my salary, my artist salary, contracting costs, accounting, legal... etc etc etc.